Genealogical Sources for Carrigaholt Parish
Carrigaholt Cultural & Heritage Festival
7:00 p.m. Thursday 2 July 2015
Carrigaholt National School
WWW version:
Parish boundaries
The present boundaries of Moyarta civil
parish were laid down formally by the Ordnance Survey, which surveyed
the whole island of Ireland between 1824 and
1846.
The parish can be seen outlined in green on the colour Historic 6" Ordnance Survey Ireland map
(1840).
The parish boundaries are little changed since 1656-1658, when the Down
Survey of Ireland became the
first ever detailed land survey on a national scale anywhere in
the world. It includes a map of the Barony of Moyfarto [sic].
Townland boundaries have changed - e.g. Breaghva townland appears to
have been originally subsumed into Moyarta East (as it still was up to
at least
1827).
The civil parishes of Moyarta and Kilballyowen constituted a single
Catholic parish until the death of the famous parish priest, Fr.
Michael Meehan (1810-1878). [A typographical error in Griffith's
Valuation (1855) sees him wrongly described as "Rev. Mchl. Sheehan, P.P."
(sic).]
Samuel Lewis
(1837) refers to the pre-1878 Catholic parish as
the union
or district of Dunaha, also called Carrigaholt, comprising the parishes
of Moyarta and Kilballyhone.
On Saturday, 23 March 1878, the Irish American Weekly,
published in New York by Fr. Meehan's cousin Patrick J. Meehan,
reported (p.6) that
Since the death of the Rev. Michael Meehan, P.P., the
parish
of Carrigaholt has been sub-divided into two minor parishes, owing to
the wide area of land over which the former parish extended.
As we have already announced, the Rev. John Fogartny [Fogarty]
Administrator of the Ennis parish, has been appointed to the
Carrigaholt division, with Father Cahill as curate, and the Rev. M.
[John] Vaughan, C.C., Bodyke, has received the other parish, with the
Rev. J. Corry as curate. Father Fogarty's removal is deeply
regretted in Ennis, where he was universally beloved.
Since then, the Catholic parishes of Carrigaholt and Cross have been
separate entities. Cross contains the civil parish of Kilballyowen and
the seven townlands in Moyarta civil parish marked with an asterisk in
the list below, while Carrigaholt contains the remainder of Moyarta
civil parish.
Other maps:
Townlands in Moyarta civil parish
In total, Moyarta civil parish comprises two small uninhabited
islands plus the following 32 townlands, which can be seen outlined in
red on the colour Historic 6" Ordnance Survey Ireland map (asterisks
denote townlands in Cross Catholic parish; the remainder are in
Carrigaholt Catholic parish):
Bellia*
Breaghva
Cammoge
Carrownaweelaun
Clarefield
Cloonconeen*
Doonaha East
Doonaha West
Furroor Lower
Furroor Upper
Kilcasheen
Kilcredaun
Killeenagh*
Killinny*
Knocknagarhoon*
Lisheencrony
Lisheenfurroor
Moveen East
Moveen West
Moyarta East
Moyarta West
Newtown East
Newtown West
Querrin
Rahaniska
Rahona East (on which stands part of the Village of
Carrigaholt)
Rahona West
Rinemackaderrig (on which stands the remainder of
the Village of Carrigaholt)
Shanganagh
Tullaroe
Trusklieve* [part of]
Tullig* [part of]
Repositories containing source material
Genealogical source material for Carrigaholt parish is
available
- online (see below)
- offline
- in the parish
- in the county
- Local Studies Centre, The Manse, Harmony Row, Ennis
- General Register Office/Civil Registration Service,
Sandfield Centre, Ennis
- nationally
- in Dublin
- Valuation Office, Irish Life Centre, Abbey Street
- National Archives, Bishop Street - search
catalogue online, e.g. for Moveen
- General Register Office, Werburgh Street
- in Roscommon
- General Register Office HQ
- overseas
- in New Zealand, courtesy of Murray Ginnane, greatgrandson of
John Ginnane, an emigrant from Rahona East
- anywhere that Carrigaholt people emigrated to where
records were better designed and have a better survival record than in
Ireland (e.g. Ellis Island, e.g. Lucy Clawsey née Collins)
Online records
In approximate reverse chronological order, consult the
following to answer questions like `Where were my ancestors in 1916?'
and `Where were my ancestors during the Famine?':
- military records for 1916 etc.
- 1901 and 1911 censuses
- National Archives search form
- National Archives browse (Moyarta
civil parish was divided into six district electoral divisions (D.E.D.)
when the boundaries of Kilrush Poor Law Union were redrawn on 22
February 1850,
each returning a single Poor Law Guardian to the Board which met weekly
at the Workhouse in Kilrush. The D.E.D.s were: Moveen (3 townlands),
Moyarta (9 townlands), Querrin (3 townlands), Rahona (6 townlands in
Moyarta, plus part of Kilballyowen civil parish), St. Martin's (5
townlands in Moyarta, plus part of Kilfearagh civil parish) and Tullig
(6 townlands, including the parts of Trusklieve and Tullig townlands in
Kilballyowen parish).)
- Clare County Library transcription
(1901 only)
- missing households
- tombstone transcriptions
- transcribed in 1980s and need to be updated
- In addition to some cillíní and small disused
cemeteries,
there are three major documented cemeteries in the parish:
- Many residents of the parish are buried in the
adjoining
parishes, for example in Kilballyowen, Kilfearagh, Kilnagalliagh or
Lisdeen cemeteries.
- Cairde Chill Caisín are planning
the restoration of
Kilcasheen Grave Yard
- civil registration indexes (births > 100 years old; marriages > 75 years old; deaths > 50 years old)
- microfilmed parish registers (to circa 1880)
- website to be launched by An Taoiseach and Minister
Humphreys on Wednesday, 8 July 2015
- Murray Ginnane's transcripts:
- microfilming stopped at the separation of the two parishes
- in Kilkee, the microfilmers missed the oldest registers
(baptisms 1836-1869 and marriages 1836-1890); these should be digitised
ASAP.
- Griffith's Valuation (1855)
- Kilrush Board of Guardians minute books
(subscription
website; added June 2015)
- While Captain (later Sir) Arthur Edward Kennedy
(1810-1883) held the position of Poor Law Inspector in Kilrush P.L.U.,
during the period from November 1847 until 3 September 1850, the height
of the Great Famine, he sent regular reports, including long lists of
those evicted in the Union, very many of them in Moyarta electoral
division, to his superiors. Kennedy's Reports and
Returns Relating to Evictions in the Kilrush Union
(1847-1849) are available online in transcribed form and sometimes
also in PDF
(13.1MB) and/or jpg form on the highly unstable
EPPI/DIPPAM website. The placename
spellings used often differ from the official spellings, and suggest
that Kennedy's handwriting may have been difficult for his printers to
read!
- The Tithe Applotment Book
(T.A.B.) for Moyarta parish, dated 17 November 1827, uses older and
slightly different subdivisions, spellings or placenames than those of
the Ordnance Survey in some parts of the parish. Here are
direct links, page by page, to the digitised PDF version of the
original book on the National Archives of Ireland website:
Title page Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 (version 1) Page 5 (version 2) Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 (version 1) Page 16 (version 2) Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 24, renumbered 23 Page 25, renumbered 24 Page 26, renumbered 25 Page 27, renumbered 26 Page 28, renumbered 27 Page 29, renumbered 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 [Page 34 was not
used and not microfilmed] Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page not clearly numbered (version 1)
Page not clearly numbered (version 2)
Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51.
- miscellaneous records at clarelibrary.ie:
- Clare Champion index
- in memoriam cards
- Lists of Freeholders
- etc. etc.
Offline records
DNA
The DNA in our mouths will soon be our most useful genealogical resource.
Three U.S. based commercial enterprises have started to collect DNA
samples for
genealogical research:
- FamilyTreeDNA (matches)
- 23andMe
(matches)
- AncestryDNA
(matches)
Data from all three companies can be copied to a free third-party site,
gedmatch.com.
DNA has confirmed that the Talty Millions went to the wrong
heirs in the 1920s.
DNA has reunited me with a fourth cousin whose grandfather was
conceived in west Clare in 1899, born in the New York Foundling Asylum
in 1900, and fostered in Texas in 1905. He was never reunited
with his parents who married in 1904 and lived in Terre Haute, Indiana.
Please submit a DNA sample to one of these databases! Your
descendants will thank you for doing so as will genealogists worldwide, especially adoptees and their
descendants.
For more:
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